The city of San Antonio conducts an audit of police evidence handling procedures roughly every five to seven years.at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, an initiative of the Scripps Howard Fund in honor of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. Contact the reporting team at
Marcia G. Shein, a veteran criminal defense lawyer based in Georgia, said criminal defendants often benefit when police agencies lose evidence after it is collected. Auditors found more than 500 people with badges that would give them access to evidence who could not be identified as current employees and concluded, “many of these… users had recently accessed the mainframe.” Auditors noted, “allowing access to sensitive information to those who don’t have a legitimate need increases the risk of data loss, corruption, manipulation, disclosure, and misuse., the city determined that “access to the property and evidence warehouse was not being reviewed.
“So there’s an initial property room, like, officers go to an initial property room next to jail, and from there, that property is taken to our actual property room on the other side of town, in San Antonio. So there is a lot of movement.” SAPD declined a records request asking the department to provide the Howard Center any documents related to the filing and logging of physical evidence in this case, including any video of evidence being logged or filed into either of the property rooms or to provide the names of those involved in the filing and transporting of such evidence. The SAPD denied the request on the grounds that the information related to a case of alleged or suspected child abuse or neglect.
“The goal of the Schertz Police Department is to provide exemplary law enforcement service and unfortunately, in this instance we failed to meet that standard,” Police Chief Jim Lowery said in the press release. “I hope that our residents know we are committed to learning from this situation and will work to ensure something like this never happens again.”
Roberts added that after his agency switched evidence facilities, the rodents have not been an issue.
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